Top Chef

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TOP CHEF - PAGE 5

"Ghostbusters" actor Ernie Hudson and Douglas Bradley , Pinhead in the "Hellraiser" movies, will be in town this weekend shooting "Deer Crossing. " Hudson plays a police captain in the horror/crime thriller and replaces "Reservoir Dogs" actor Michael Madsen , who dropped out for personal reasons. Bradley plays a sheriff in the film, which shoots in Mayfair and near Franklin Mills. Christian Jude Grillo is the writer/director, and John Michael Kent produces the film in conjunction with Potent Media.

On Saturday, Top Chef winner Kevin Sbraga opens the doors to his Broad Street eatery, Sbraga (440 S. Broad St., 215-735-1913, sbraga.com). Dining tables are reserved for a $45, four-course, prix-fixe-only dinner experience, where guests choose their dishes, such as foie gras soup, or meatloaf with royal trumpet mushrooms. Order a la carte at the bar or chef's counter. Desserts come from his pastry chef wife, Jesmary. Also opened The Avenue of the Arts buzz continues south, where Tashan (777 S. Broad St., 267-687-2170, mytashan.com)

This is one in an occasional series of profiles of local chefs or restaurant owners. The cutting edge of American cooking is a lot like the history of our country itself: an experiment with different cultures and different ingredients that come together in an exciting way. That is the philosophy of Daniel Stern, former executive chef of Le Bec-Fin, who is poking around the area for the right space to open a place of his own. "What is...

It was a bit of a surprise all around last fall when Martin Hamann showed up in the sprawling kitchen of Philadelphia's old-line Union League. The accomplished chef, a product of Morton, Delaware County (where his father ran a bakery specializing in Danish and after-church pastries), had spent fully half his 50 years at the classy Four Seasons hotel, working his way up from apprentice to top chef. He'd ascended to that post in 2001 when his friend and mentor Jean-Marie Lacroix stepped down.

WASHINGTON - Philadelphia's capital culinary cred was on display here last week, when seven area chefs were named to the American Chef Corps, a new State Department program engaging the country's top toques to foster diplomacy among nations. Chef Joe Cicala of Le Virtú, who was thrilled to be tapped along with some of his "culinary heroes," believes this is an opportunity for him to serve his country with what he does best. Chef Jean-Marie Lacroix, the old-guard French master at the restaurant that still bears his name after his departure, considers it a chance to show the world how far American cuisine has evolved.

It's a pity the Geneva Conventions haven't been invoked to end the cruel abuses regularly inflicted on Cajun and Creole cuisine hereabouts - horrible bread suffocating the po'boy, gumbos salty beyond belief, gummy rice, unrecognizable jambalaya, odd olive salads that insult the great state of Louisiana. I have taken to squirming and averting my eyes upon encountering Cajun-themed eateries, unleashed by the blackened-redfish craze of the 1980s, still popping up now and then, often in the worst of all possible hands.

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Reader: Gut feeling, how do you think Tryst will be received? C.L. : I've been out of town since Tryst opened as a replacement for Le Bar Lyonnais below Le Bec, so obviously, I haven't had a chance yet to visit. I think it's a good idea to give Le Bec a fresh draw - even downstairs - and chef Nicholas Elmi certainly has the talent worth highlighting. Lyonnais was a great spot for well-cooked bistro classics (quenelles, steak frites, etc.)

Matt Ridgway calls the slabs that come out of his curing room at PorcSalt, simply, bacon. Which doesn't quite tell the whole story. That the pork bellies come from flavorful, old breeds - Berkshire and Berkshire-Duroc crosses, that last one from Breakway Farms in Mount Joy. That it is cured in the Bucks County honey his father, Josef, collects. Or alternatively - for 10 days - with red Burgundy wine. Or that it is, by design, hot-smoked for 10 hours over fruitwood at temperatures 10 degrees higher than name brands, which renders it (unlike commercial bacons)

IT'S PRETTY HARD not to recognize former Sixers center Dikembe Mutombo . But Dana Spain , president of Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society, says that she couldn't figure out why the 7-foot-2 passenger she spoke French with Sunday on a flight from Paris looked so familiar. Spain, who also works in branding and marketing, said that she and Mutombo talked real estate, including how he hasn't been able to sell his home in Villanova, and only when they traded business cards at PHL baggage claim did Spain get "clued into the fact that I'm a total f---ing idiot," she told us yesterday.

NEW YORK - Dan Barber emerges one recent afternoon from the Union Square Greenmarket with a spring bounty: asparagus, purple kohlrabi, ramps, fiddlehead ferns and dandelion greens. They're luscious, fresher-than-fresh and Barber can't wait to get them into the kitchen. When he does, what will he do with them? The answer is pure Dan Barber. "Not a lot," he says with a smile, sipping iced coffee near the market. "As I get better and better as a chef, I'm doing less and less.